New York, June 12, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the arrest in Canada on Thursday of Ali Omar Ader, a Somali allegedly involved in the 2008 kidnapping of journalists Amanda Lindhout, Nigel Brennan, and Abdifatah Mohamed Elmi, a Somali fixer and photojournalist. Ali, who appeared briefly in court in Ottawa today, is alleged to be the main negotiator of the kidnappers and faces hostage-taking charges, according to a statement by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

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Nairobi, May 1, 2015--Unidentified armed men on Wednesday night shot dead Somali journalist Daud Ali Omar at his home, according to local journalists and news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Somali authorities to identify the motive in the murder and apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators.

The gunmen broke into Daud's house at around 1 a.m. in the Bardaale neighborhood in the south-central city of Baidoa while the journalist and his wife, Hawo Abdi Aden, were sleeping, news reports and local journalists said. The gunmen shot the two dead and fled the scene before the police arrived, the reports said. Daud and his wife leave behind three children, local journalists said.

Conditions for the press in the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland may, on the surface, appear to be improving. But without a functioning media law to lend protection, and pending legislative elections, journalists remain wary of state harassment.

Nairobi, April 14, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the shooting attack on a Somali photographer in Mogadishu and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate the case and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.Farhan Suleiman Dahir works for the state-run Radio Mogadishu, whose journalists have been targeted several times in recent years.

Nairobi, April 7, 2014--Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency raided the Shabelle Media Network offices on April 3, arrested staff and shuttered the privately ownedstations Radio Shabelle and Sky FM, according to local journalists. The raid came after the network aired a clip of the militant group Al-Shabab claiming responsibility for the attack on a university in Kenya, a Security Ministry spokesman said.

On March 26, CPJ partnered with students at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism and Knight chair and Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest to launch the Press Uncuffed: Free the Press campaign at the Newseum in Washington. The campaign aimed to raise awareness about nine journalists imprisoned around the world in relation to their work. At least 221 journalists were behind bars when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

The students and Priest developed the idea of selling bracelets bearing the names of nine jailed journalists. All proceeds are being donated CPJ.

Click here to read the profiles of the featured journalists or here to purchase a bracelet.

Nairobi, March 3, 2015--A Somali court in Mogadishu on Sunday convicted one journalist of public incitement and two others of publishing false news and imposed harsh fines on them, according to news reports. The journalists are out of prison, but a fourth is still being detained, the reports said.

Nairobi, January 5, 2015--Somali security forces arrested five journalists in two separate cases over the weekend in the capital, Mogadishu, according to news reports. Three of them are still being held.

In 2014, at least 60 journalists and 11 media workers were killed in relation to their work, according to CPJ research. Local and international journalists died covering conflicts, including in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine, while many others were murdered reporting on corruption and organized crime in their own countries.

Here, CPJ remembers some of the journalists who gave their lives to bring us this year's headlines.

More than 200 journalists are imprisoned for their work for the third consecutive year, reflecting a global surge in authoritarianism. China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists in 2014. A CPJ special report by Shazdeh Omari